Students at Melbourne’s Monash University are fighting to save the universities’ Centre for Theatre and Performance, which has been slated to close at the end of the year. The university’s cuts, which Monash has attributed to “a shortfall in revenue caused by the COVID-19 pandemic”, will also affect musicology units.

“Due to consistently low completions, low unit enrolments and insufficiency of work, the major in Theatre and Performance will be disestablished and transformed into a minor sequence, and offered by locating the Centre to within Monash University’s Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music,” the university said in a statement.

My Brilliant CareerAndrew Coshan and Luisa Scrofani in the musical My Brilliant Career at Monash University. Photograph © John Lloyd Fillingham

“This proposal unfairly targets, and would gut the CTP, a globally leading research institution which, through its graduates and staff, contributes fundamentally to national cultural industries,” the #SaveOurCTP campaign’s statement says, drawing attention to the fact that Monash is equal 20th in the QS World University Rankings for performing arts, “which can be attributed to the exceptional work of both the CTP and the Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music”.

The campaign has also been...